Contributed by bongsmcj. Posted by aubin on Thursday, July 5, 2012 at 1:00 PM (EDT)

In a move which seems to bring The Simpsons satirical The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie show to life - minus the self-aware irony - long-running kids pizza chain Chuck E. Cheese is rebranding their iconic New Jersey rat mascot as a "hip, electric-guitar-playing rock star."

To that end, they have recruited Jaret Reddick of ska/punk outfit Bowling For Soup to play the new version of the mascot which we swear was invented with an exchange like this:

We at the network want a dog mouse with attitude. He's edgy, he's "in
your face." You've heard the expression "let's get busy"?
Well, this is a dog mouse who gets "biz-zay!" Consistently and
thoroughly.[...] We're talking about a totally outrageous
paradigm!

The pizza-and-game chain was founded by Nolan Bushnell, who also co-founded Atari. It is now run by CEC Entertainment Inc.

This confused me, as well. After doing a runthrough of their albums on Wikipedia, I found that their 1998 album 'Rock On Honorable Ones!!!' supposedly has several ska songs, though after actually taking the time to listen to sound samples (which I instantly regretted), that translates to meaning several of its songs merely feature a horn section, with only one, "2113", having any actual ska rhythms (albeit making up only the bridge). Again, both "ska songs" and the use of a horn section are present on only one of the band's eleven pop-punk albums.

...well, that's a good enough reason to label them a "ska-punk" band, in my opinion.

We "ironically" went once in college (I think I was 19). It seriously scared me to death. You realize there's no way they can (or even attempt) to clean most of that stuff. You feel like you're going to die of the plague when you leave. I was awesome at 19.

I was debating whether or not to leave this alone, but diabetes is an important issue to me. Childhood onsent diabetes (Type I) is caused when the pancreas stops producing insulin due to no fault of the person's own. It's Type II that is generally caused by poor dieatary habits. Of course nowadays, more and more children are being stricken with Type II because their parents shove Chuck E Cheese pizza and McDonalds down their bratty kids gullets.

Anyway, that's my lecture for the day. I'm not trying to troll, I just know too many people with Type I who get grouped in with Type II even though they can't do anything about it.

Thanks for the education. That didn't seem like trolling to me, at all, and your knowledge is quite welcome even though it sucks that these diseases exist. I apologize if my comment offended you. Have a great day!

In Rockford about ten years ago some 16 year old kid snapped his neck on the slide going into the ball pit, and he died instantly. No one noticed he was missing for two hours cause they were having so much fun.

How Chuck E. Cheese didn't market that story to convince people how great a place it is, I'll never know.

It's true. I was living in Rockford at the time. The kid was 16 and had been told multiple times by employees to not be going down the slide head first. He went in there alone and got caught in the slide breaking his neck. His body was in the ball pit for two hours, and no one noticed.

Chuck E Cheese was required, by law, to keep the balls locked up in their back room for five years in case a class action arose. My sister had a friend who worked there and took her back to show her the balls the kid died in.

I was looking for a link as well, and nothing came up. A story of a sex offender working there for 11 years did, though.

Man, Chuck E Cheese hush hush all that stuff. Pretty much every town has a "chuckie story". I've heard some ridiculous one and they're all true.

The most amazing one I've heard is a mom who got so drunk that she picked up the wrong kids, put them to bed and passed out. A few hours later, they had checked the tapes, tracked her down and rushed to her house. She answered the door, completely sober, said "that is ridiculous, I think I know who my kids are, here, come in and we'll straighten this misunderstanding out" and apparently her face when she realized that it wasn't her kids was fucking amazing. Cops talk about it all the time, because, right, that's a funny story, isn't it?..